53 Comments (Closed)

Interesting, these are the same conclusions I’ve come to lately.

Regarding the first problem (back button), that’s what I’ve found yesterday on delicious IIRC:

http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/

michele at 20.03.07 / 08AM

I think Flash has come a long way and I believe both can co-exist. We’re using them together – part HTML, part Flash – for our poster builder on our festivals website (be gentle, it’s only in beta!) so we can use fonts that wouldn’t normally be installed.

The Flash/JS ‘bridge’ works very well, I suggest not using the ‘AFLAX’ library but directly using the ExternalInterface class in your flash code for Javascript calls only because that we found the AFLAX bridge to be a little unpredictable at times.

Flash has played a great role in the latest web revolution. Take a look at Justin.tv for instance. A combination of Rails, Flash, Wowza, Ajax, Java and some interesting hacked hardware.

Garth at 20.03.07 / 09AM

I agree that they can co-exist. I’m not a Flash fan and haven’t had much of a need for it, but it still gets the nod for animation-heavy stuff, sound, video, etc. Knowing when to pick one technology over the other is key.

Thomas Messier at 20.03.07 / 12PM

Something that Ajax has over Flash is a knowledge cost of entry and not an economic and knowledge cost of entry.

I’d really prefer to see a completely open platform take Flash’s place, but I must admit Adobe is taking Flash in an interesting direction.

James H at 20.03.07 / 14PM

“The interface to JavaScript has been improved too with the Flash/Ajax bridge”

Don’t forget about the externalInterface in Flash 8 either :) I used it quite heavily when creating flashBug to allow me to interact with the Firebug console.

Unlike previous communication methods like getURL which was pretty much a one way street _ the externalInterface allows seamless communication. Once you have added your callbacks within Flash you can then access them like any other objects methods….._myFlash.method();

Aaron Bassett at 20.03.07 / 15PM

Man, it’s funny - I was just ready to post a similar article on my site. Over the weekend I dove into flex and was astounded at how “un-flashlike” it really is. I’ve been a die-hard standards nazi for far too long, and Javascript is starting to fail me. I’m super-stoked about Flex, and if there’s a real “Web 2.0” - it’s flex. It’s basically reinventing the browser, and it’s markup language all tunneled through a SWF.

Kyle at 20.03.07 / 16PM

With respect to Flex’s non-open status, you should check out some of Ted Leung’s recent articles, Brendon’s comments and I have a few of my own

J Aaron Farr at 20.03.07 / 16PM

I used to think that complex layouts weren’t practical, but the layout in Jack Slocum’s Ext library actually seems to work quite well. I’ve never actually tinkered with it on my own project, but his works much better than others I’ve tried.

On static types: I hate Adobe’s coding style. Looks like Java. I write MochiKit-style javascript (rock!).

I'll type annotate my method signatures for a perf boost - the compiler should be able to figure things out from there in almost all cases - but I'd be more interested in seeing the compiler inline functions and tail call optimize.

I’m looking forward to javascript-quality libraries being available for Flash. I’m having to roll my own at the moment, which is not fun.

Karl G at 20.03.07 / 16PM

Not only is the ActionScript language becoming like Java – the whole damn thing is becoming like Java. Granted, Flash tends to be faster and a little bit better looking than most Java Applets, but it’s all starting to look quite heavy.

The Java Applet story never really panned out like it was hyped; and the Flex hype is starting to sound exactly the same.

Oh yeah, and the ActiveX story sounded pretty similar too.

The big corporations stagnate until there’s sufficient competition. C#’s rapid progression into new features has probably done more to propel Java forward than anything in recent years.

For Flex, the competition is AJAX. If this new wave of browser development using DHTML, Javascript, JSON, and XMLHTTPRequest didn’t come along, Flash wouldn’t have been threatened and I highly doubt Flex or any other free tools would have shown up at all.

As such, I think it’s up to the AJAX community to continue to provide an alternative. Work with Flex, sure, but once there’s no competition it could very well stagnate just like IE did once it achieved 90+ percent browser share. Microsoft went from their party line of “HTML Experience Everywhere – we are going to be the absolute best web experience company!” to “IE6 ought to be just about enough for anybody for the remainder of time.” That is, until Firefox finally became a plausible alternative and started to threaten that dominance.

I just have a hard time trusting Adobe in this arena. Nothing against the company (I continue to use PhotoShop and still occasionally use GoLive for some personal site work), but I just don’t trust them to be good gatekeepers of client side web application technology. And I can’t help but think I’m in a time warp back to 1996/97 whenever I hear about all of the great “rich application” crap Flex/Flash can bring.

Jeff Shell at 20.03.07 / 18PM

If you want to see the full deep-links done, check out the new garniernutritioniste.com site, and soon the new timewarner.com . In fact, everything we do now at my company (and I do) will have full deep-link support. Once you get your head around the design process using the tools (historybridge js) it’s not that much worse than developing without it.

Andy D at 20.03.07 / 19PM

I too would very much like to get back to speed with Flash. I used to be a pretty decent AS1 dev (before I took the plunge into standards, advanced JS, and Rails), but these days AS3 and Flex 2 are utterly alien to me.

Does anyone have any good pointers to the essential ressources ? Where should I start ? Should I try to un-learn all that I know about Flash to better embrace AS3, etc ?

Thanks.

Ned Baldessin at 20.03.07 / 21PM

Cheers for all the comments. It appears you all know a lot more about this than me!

I second Ned’s comment: If you have any good starting points for getting up to speed please post them here. Much appreciated.

Dan at 20.03.07 / 22PM

The Adobe team has done a stellar job at support & getting people up to speed. I’ve learned a lot by just reading the PDF guides+tutorials at Flex.org (lower-left).

Kyle Neath at 20.03.07 / 22PM

Thanks for the kind works!

For those who are interested, the slideshow from my talk are available here:

http://www.slideshare.net/jboutelle/ajax-vs-flash-whats-right-for-you

I’ve included my speaking notes in the bottom of each slide, in acknowledgement of the fact that slides usually don’t tell the story by themselves. ;->

Jonathan Boutelle at 20.03.07 / 22PM

what have standards done for us anyway?

That’s a joke, right?

I notice your web site isn’t done in Flash.

There might just be a reason for that.

Mike Cantelon at 21.03.07 / 01AM

The key has always been using the right technology for the job. I hope we never get so attached to (or repulsed by) particular technologies that we forget this fundamental idea.

Chris Huff at 21.03.07 / 06AM

Fundamentally, the point of web site development (with the exception of cheap games and other amusements) is to get information into the hands of people. If I’m a potential customer, and I can’t use your web site, I’m not going to buy from you. If it’s twice as pretty, or half as pretty, it doesn’t really matter all that much, except to graphic designers such as yourself. With Flash, you’re fundamentally excluding a huge chunk of your customer base. If a customer doesn’t have Flash installed, your web site doesn’t work, and they’ll go to a competitor.

Lots of people don’t have Flash installed. Corporate locked-down network? No Flash. Clueless user with a new computer? No Flash. Thin device like a smart cell phone/PDA? No Flash. People who like all free software? No Flash.

Google also won’t index your content if it’s all hidden in Flash.

You’ve also got the whole issue of disabled people—people with worst eyesight (including most elderly) have systems configured bigger font sizes. Blind people use screen readers. Will your Flash application support that? I don’t know if Flash can’t, or if most of the Flash out there doesn’t, but in most cases, your disabled customers are left out. Operating in a region with strong disabled protection laws? Then you’ve also got a lawsuit waiting to happen.

AJAX, for all its flaws, works in any browser, for any customer. If it’s done right, it even works on cell phones and other devices without AJAX capability (menus just don’t pop down—users need to click). It is indexable by Google. People can save a page to disk or print it.

With Flash, your web site ends up prettier, but you fundamentally lose a bunch of customers. It’s a horrible trade-off for anything other than ads and on-line games. You’re even better off with something as crude as HTML 2.0, as compared to Flash.

Peter at 21.03.07 / 07AM

Peter: I think that for content HTML is still king but that’s not where it fits into the puzzle – it’s useful for writing chunks of application UI that JavaScript just can’t do well.

Flash does have most of those problems (except for some of the accessibility points you mentioned – screen readers are now well supported I believe as well as a host of other accessibility features) but only if you choose the all or nothing approach. If you use HTML pages with good URLs, indexable content etc then use flash only for the elements of the page you need to.

Also, I don’t see Ajax as being more widely supported or more stable as a platform than SWF at all. At least with SWF the client either supports it or it doesn’t and this is easily detectable. There’s no chance of it partially working or detection failing as there is in Ajax applications. Also, corporate firewalls often block JavaScript to. And yes, you can write JS unobtrusively but I think (and this is something I really want to experiment with) it’s possible to implement SWF elements via progressive enhancement.

I think bringing a modern approach to SWF is going to be an exciting area!

Dan at 21.03.07 / 13PM

It’s definitely becoming possible to implement SWF elements with progressive enhancement.

We’ve had success at space150 with the Faust technique (Flash reads HTML data / microformats from a div, then replaces that div with its own rendering)

Bobby van der Sluis did a write-up for Adobe on progressive enhancement with Flash which touches on some other tasty implementation details.

In fact, there’s been a lot of code released (Faust, SWFAddress, SWFFIX, sIFR and SWFIR ...

But is there any single resource for all the Flash+Standards work that’s going on? One page that’s collecting these libraries?

Eric Skogen at 21.03.07 / 16PM

While I totally agree that Flash is totally going to be where it’s at in the short term future…

I just don’t trust Adobe. And I am not going to be putting all my eggs in any basket, especially not one that is entirely controlled by an organization that is run by managers.

Also, my user side absolutely hates the flash components, and any attempt to try and recreate an os gui inside an app or framework or whatever. bleah!

I do think that Apollo could potentially be a massively important deal, as long as users aren’t abused by too much bad gui and interface design. I hope it doesn’t just become yet another widget platform.

So, I guess I’m mixed. But, yes! flash will become an absolute necessity in the very near term. We are currently working on some seriously slick things with the stuff over at the oval of insanity.

Thomas Aylott at 22.03.07 / 00AM

http://blog.space150.com/2007/1/11/faust-flash-augmenting-standards/comments/708#comment-708

Ruben Rojas at 22.03.07 / 02AM

AS3 is definitely a gigantic leap backwards, except for performance.

The fact that they reorganized the whole library into 50 or so different namespaces and made just about everything more code than it used to be doesn’t help either.

Really nice of them not to provide an AS2 compiler to the new runtime, or an AS2 to AS3 translator. Good job guys.

All that said, it’s a solid platform. You can build stuff with it that works. It’s a pretty shitty experience though, hopefully people write some good frameworks to de-Java the standard library and some good compilers or preprocessors to do type inference.

Bob Ippolito at 22.03.07 / 08AM

“Google also won’t index your content if it’s all hidden in Flash”

I have to disagree take a look at Adobe Search Engine SDK this or something similar has already been included in the googlebot and perhaps others. So they can index text based content contained within flash files :)

“Clueless user with a new computer? No Flash. Thin device like a smart cell phone/PDA? No Flash”

Mr J.Bloggs punter might not know how to go and get flash themselves but when it is required they can be prompted to install it. Also (and I could very well be wrong here) but was 1 of the default XP/IE6 installs not preloaded with Flash player 7? As for thin devices may now support mobile Flash, and the Flash IDE even comes equipped with facilities for building and testing applications for these devices.

“You’ve also got the whole issue of disabled people”

WebAIM has some good information on creating accessible flash content. Just cause your site isn’t in plain HTML doesn’t mean it can’t be accessible.

“With Flash, your web site ends up prettier, but you fundamentally lose a bunch of customers. It’s a horrible trade-off for anything other than ads and on-line games. You’re even better off with something as crude as HTML 2.0, as compared to Flash.”

Rubbish rubbish rubbish, it is this kind of notion I hope that Dan is trying to dispel with this post. Used correctly, with care and in conjunction with other web technologies Flash can add to a website experience whilst avoiding all the problems you mentioned.

You really need to stop living in 2001 and embrace the usefulness of the new wave of integrated Flash applications. Or do you still believe that Javascript is only useful for popups and mouse trails as well??

Aaron Bassett at 22.03.07 / 09AM

Flash, DHTML, Javascript, Ajax? I think that each tools is good for a specify projects. Flash has its features, like javascript has its features. For examples, if I have to browser the HTML DOM only Javascript can do it! Flash can only call a Javascript function to change an innerHTML!

See

http://www.undolog.com/2007/03/17/dove-javascript-vince/

or

http://www.undolog.com/2007/03/21/dove-javascript-perde/

Giovambattista Fazioli at 22.03.07 / 10AM

Open source flash goodness

justin at 22.03.07 / 10AM

Laszlo offers a good compromise between Flash and DHTML. The latest beta (OpenLaszlo 4.0) allows either as an export. The configuration is via XML and works on Java. It’s been Open Source for a few years now. Also there was talk of Sun working with Laszlo on a flash mobile platform.

Finbar Dineen at 22.03.07 / 11AM

I have never been a keen flash developer and i haven’t really liked the tools and mostly everything that’s done in flash is done in flash for the wrong reasons – ie corporate websites/etc that should be done properly, but have been done in flash because it’s the “easy” way out, but flash definitely has it’s uses, and now with the integration with js/css/html (externalInterface) it’s becoming very useful for certain applications.

Hate to blow my own horn, but we are working on a opensource project that’s becoming quite popular, and it is a perfect example to illustrate the points of this post. It takes use of the upload capabilitys of flash and ‘gives’ them to javascript, so you can do multiple-file uploads without page reloads, give ongoing information to the user on what’s going on and i’m sure much more. The project is called SWFUpload and has been featured on ajaxian a couple of times.

Lars Huring at 22.03.07 / 12PM

Aaron: Yes, I am trying to dispell these old school opinions of Flash. Although, someone like you who actually is up on this is in a much better position than me so thanks for those links. Very useful.

Bob: I’m in total agreement on AS3. It’s being made more and more tedious to code as new versions emerge. It’s especially noticeable if you normally work with scripting languages. No matter how many arguments I read for static typing I still think (aside from performance issues) it’s more of a bind than a benefit unless, as I said, you are a stupid programmer :) Ack, and it’s coming to JavaScript too….please, Brendan, nooooooo!!!!! At least it’s optional I suppose.

Dan at 22.03.07 / 12PM

I recommed to take a look at OpenLaszlo. It has just reached version 4 and it is open source alternative for Flex.

http://www.openlaszlo.org/

pepez at 22.03.07 / 12PM

There’s a lot of good comments on this page already…

I posted a similar thing recently, and came to the same conclusion that the panel did. (That Flash is a perfectly legitimate tool, and you can mix and match it with Javascript and HTML and CSS)

I’d also like to comment on some of the comments:

@Eric Skogen: I track most of that stuff on my blog: http://blog.deconcept.com/

@Peter and Aaron Bassett: There’s much better ways to get your content indexed by google when you are using Flash: A modern approach to Flash SEO

Geoff at 22.03.07 / 13PM

@Geoff: I wasn’t saying relying on a spiders ability to read flash files is the best SEO approach.

I already provide alternate content in much the same way as described in your link (except I prefer to use U.F.O than swfObject) I was just pointing out that the age old belief that whatever you put in your flash file is completely hidden from spiders is now incorrect.

Aaron Bassett at 22.03.07 / 13PM

Lars, I was also thinking of your project (swfupload) while reading the article.

I think instead of binding to a single technology the emphasis should be on providing the best overall experience.

Sharandeep Brar at 22.03.07 / 15PM

You can turn off the requirements for specifying type by setting strict=false when compiling. There are also some options like es=true and as=false that change how the compiler generates code to give you the looser syntax. I don’t know if we’ve even tested Flex in that mode, but you’re welcome to give it a try. Compiler arguments help is here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/compilers_123_24.html

Matt (Adobe) at 22.03.07 / 15PM

SWFUpload looks really really cool!

Jonathan Boutelle at 22.03.07 / 21PM

I am currently sitting here at the WebDU conference (Webdu.com.au), Adobe is featuring heavily in this conference and promoting Adobe Flex (for developing SWF’s and Adobe Apollo – for converting your Flex Applications into Desktop applications).

There are many companies that have done this already using Apolo and Flex. I think Long Term – Adobe is trying to capitalise on the web 2.0 app development with Adobe Flex and Apollo, and they are making it very sweet.

I just downloaded the Flex IDE Eclipse plugin, and I cant believe how easy it is to write a dynamic web 2.0-style app.

Sherif Mansour at 23.03.07 / 02AM

I’ve had some of those ideas floating around in my head, but now I can simply reference your post. Thanks for taking the time to make this contribution to the discussion.

Nate Koechley at 23.03.07 / 21PM

@Geoff: I wasn’t saying relying on a spiders ability to read flash files is the best SEO approach.

I already provide alternate content in much the same way as described in your link (except I prefer to use U.F.O than swfObject) I was just pointing out that the age old belief that whatever you put in your flash file is completely hidden from spiders is now incorrect.

电子网 at 24.03.07 / 03AM

I run a web development company, and we use both Flash and AJAX in our projects.

Along the time we found that the best practice in terms of speed of coding and usability is to place several Flash objects wherever is required, but keeping the page as Html files, instead of developing a full flash site. This approach has some advantages also in terms of working as a team, as some crew members have in charge animations, others coding, and so.

About AJAX, we focused on compatibility, as several browsers process JavaScript with slight differences, thus having incompatibilities we needed a solid library for AJAX requests and we came with the solution of Prototype JavaScript library instead of programming our own request script. But still we messed up with integrating this library with our server side code.

Lately we discovered AjaxCore, a tiny framework that encapsulates all AJAX functionality provided by Prototype in one php class, and we’re currently migrating our code with high success at a lightning fast time.

Peter Gurtmann at 24.03.07 / 17PM

Apollo seems interesting, but with an install required isnt it too cumbersome ?

Namastey at 26.03.07 / 05AM

Inspiring post, as always. Some desagreements:

- web standards’ benefits don’t limit to separation among content and presentation. For me, web standards are valuable for interoperability. It is very timesaving to program once and run everywhere (do you remember original Java slogan?), meaning the web app will work and look the same everywhere (any client agent). Without standards this is impossible.

- your proposed solutions to your own Flash trouble’s list are not so clear as the list itself, aren’t they? I mean, you may produce code to fournish Flash with URL capabilities any of us would love, but it is Flash who should supply us with it, like Adobe PDF’s bookmarks or so.

We also feel Flash is getting more and more interesting, but it seems like Adobe’s strategy is make us forget browsers and keep only with the Flash plugin like a new standalone app.

jmquarck at 26.03.07 / 08AM

jmquarck: Yes, you are right about web standards. There are other benefits (It was a jokey comment) but I think it’s mostly about seperation.

I don’t actually think it’s flashes problem to provide us with deep linking etc though. It’s our job to implement things that work with the browser rather than against it as it has been with authoring HTML/CSS/JS content.

Dan at 26.03.07 / 16PM

I’m going through exactly the same design problems and its good to hear someone elses own words about this subject.

Thanks, Buddy Toups

Buddy at 29.03.07 / 18PM

This is one of the first posts I’ve read since a long time (since all the Flash bashing) that shows some of the positive aspects of working with Flash. And under the right condition Flash can really improve your site.

Groningen at 02.04.07 / 06AM

Dan, have you used any statically typed language with type inference ?

Or do you prefer run-time errors over compile-time ones ?

margot at 02.04.07 / 12PM

yeah !

karlos at 04.04.07 / 12PM

Apollo is able to render both HTML and Javascript! So, Flash can be forward rispect simple Javascript…

Giovambattista Fazioli at 06.04.07 / 08AM

I Forget… on Adobe Apollo site there is a sample application (Fresh) that use a javascript library for rendering: Ext

Fresh is not an Apollo true Application. Fresh shows how to render HTML/Javascript in Apollo framework… amazing

Giovambattista Fazioli at 06.04.07 / 08AM

Ehm, men.. and what about Adobe Flex? I strongly recommend it!

Obchodné spoločnosti at 04.05.07 / 07AM

The Macromedia Family is included by Adobe now. They have a strong position. I think both of them, Ajax and Flash can co-exist. We are using both.

Jens at 28.05.07 / 14PM

Thanks for very interesting article. I really enjoyed reading all of your articles. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. Keep up the good work. Greetings

Allest at 04.06.07 / 12PM

I agree that they can co-exist.

fulvs at 06.06.07 / 05AM

Hey, nice article.. i will try to translate it on Polish and put on my site :)

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